


forty thousand men and women every day

by ignipes



Category: Panic At The Disco, Supernatural
Genre: Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-05-12
Updated: 2008-05-12
Packaged: 2017-10-03 09:50:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ignipes/pseuds/ignipes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world ends and Dean's on a road trip with somebody else's little brother.</p>
            </blockquote>





	forty thousand men and women every day

Sam is in Las Vegas when the world ends.

Dean isn't. He's in Georgia.

"I am never letting you go to fucking Las Vegas without me again," Dean says.

He cradles the phone against his shoulder to put the car in gear and steer one-handed out of the parking lot. Eighteen hours ago the streets of Atlanta had been packed with traffic, but they're nearly empty now. There are abandoned cars littering every sidewalk and driveway, drivers' side doors hanging open and bodies half-dragged out.

"You got drunk, you lost all our money, you fraternized with loose women, and you caused the fucking zombie apocalypse."

"Dean." Sam's huff of laughter is quiet but not forced; Dean relaxes a notch. "I'm pretty sure the zombie thing isn't my fault. I think it started in Minnesota."

"I hate Minnesota," Dean says.

"I'm not sure there's much of Minnesota left by now," Sam says quietly.

Dean sighs. "Sammy, look. Just--just stay put, okay? Stay where you are and--" He's interrupted by a burst of clicks in his ears, followed quickly by dead, hollow silence. "Sam? Sammy?"

Dean looks at the phone: no signal.

"Fuck!" He hurls the phone across the car, hears a satisfying crack when it hits the window. He's not surprised; he shouldn't be surprised. According to the last news report he saw, power grids were falling like dominoes all across the country, all over the world. "Motherfucking dead _fuckers_," Dean says, more quietly. "I fucking hate zombies."

Atlanta to Vegas. Two thousand miles, give or take. Maybe Sam can stay put for thirty hours. Wall himself up in a room, raid the mini-bar, built a fucking pillow fort.

"Yeah, right," Dean mutters.

He's twisting around to look over his shoulder, see what kind of ammo he has readily available in the back seat, and he glimpses movement from the corner of his eye. He hears a shout, jams his foot on the brake automatically, and jerks the steering wheel right, hard.

He clips the kid anyway, just as the car skids to a stop. Living kid, he thinks quickly, living kid leaning on the hood of the car, pale with fear and slumping with exhaustion, looking around wildly and--fuck, there, between the houses, a whole fucking _pack_ of them, they're not even running, just slinking along like sick fucking animals, bloody mouths grinning, bloody hands grasping, and Dean lurches across the seat, unlocks the passenger door.

"Get in, get in, _get the fuck in!_"

Whether or not the kid hears him, he's running around the front of the car, yanking the door open and dodging inside. Dean hits the gas before the door's even shut and the pack goes down one by one--_thunk, thunk, thunk_\--as the kid drags his feet inside and pulls the door closed.

"Um." The kid's panting heavily, gasping for breath. Dean wonders how far he ran from those things, how many blocks they chased him. He rights himself so he's not sprawled across the seat and looks at Dean, wide scared eyes behind crooked glasses. "Thanks. Thanks for--um. Hi?"

"I fucking hate zombies," Dean answers.

The kid laughs, a sharp exhale like it's startled from him, and he says, "Yeah. Yeah, me too." He hesitates a second like he's going to say more, glances at the gun on the seat between then, and reaches up slowly to put his seatbelt on. "Yeah, zombies. Right now I'm kinda wishing zombies were still imaginary."

-

"And beheading," Dean finishes. He makes a chopping motion with his hand and feels a little smug when the kid nods in undisguised awe. "But you have to get close for that, obviously, and it's a lot fucking harder than it looks. There are tendons and shit in the neck, even when they're dead, and if you don't get it on the first stroke they're still fighting."

They've made it out of the city and are headed west on I-20, dodging crashed semis and strewn corpses. There's a massive pillar of smoke rising into the sky a few miles up ahead. Train wreck, Dean guesses. Factory explosion, tanker pile-up. Could be anything. It's black and towering and looks like a gash through the hazy blue sky.

"So that's what you do?" the kid asks. He bounces in his seat and kicks his feet like a little kid. "I mean, even before... before all of this? Is that even a real job, badass zombie hunter?"

Dean says, "The pay's shit, but there's no shortage of work. Zombies, demons, ghosts, monsters, good ol' fashioned things that go bump in the night."

The kid laughs. "Yeah, sure."

Dean shrugs and drums his fingers on the steering wheel. "It it's evil, I kill it."

The kid doesn't look like he doubts it--save a guy's life from a pack of rabid zombies and he'll believe anything, Dean figures--and he's maybe even a little impressed. "How'd you get that job?"

"Family business."

"Cool. Is your family--" He trails off and shifts uncomfortably.

"My brother's in Nevada," Dean says. "He was visiting friends. We aren't usually..." _Apart_, but that sounds ridiculous, too fucking needy, however true it is. He's the one who told Sam to go see his college friends get married, he's the one who convinced them both a weekend apart for a little R &amp; R was a good idea.

And it would have been, Dean thinks stubbornly, if it weren't for the fucking zombies.

The kid brightens up immediately. "I live in Vegas," he says. "I've lived there my whole life. Is that where you're going now? All my friends are there, my family... Can I--I mean, you don't seem like an asshole who'd just toss me out by the side of the road, but can I--"

"Yeah, sure," Dean says. He's not an asshole who will toss a kid out by the side of the road. And he doesn't want to ask, not really, he doesn't give a fuck about this kid's story, but it's a long drive and the scenery ain't much to look at. "So what about you? Were you in college?"

"Nah." The kid smiles, but he looks more worried than happy. "I'm in a band."

"What, like, jamming with your friends?"

"Pretty much, yeah. We do all right."

"Hate to break it to you, but I don't think you'll be getting any new groupies anytime soon. At least not the living kind."

The kid laughs, but it fades quickly.

-

"You think it's true?"

Dean glances across the car. The kid has Dean's box of cassette tapes on his lap. He's just finished rambling for fifteen minutes about Motörhead's live covers of Chuck Berry songs, and Jesus Christ on a tricycle, Dean has never met anybody who talks as much as this kid. He likes music and everything, but he's starting to wonder if the little dude has an off-switch.

"Do I think what's true?"

"That hell is full. That that's why this is happening." The kid gestures grandly, a movement too big for the inside of the car, but there's nothing outside the windows except empty fields and a smoke-yellow sky. They're still driving west, away from the rising sun, and the radio hasn't picked up so much as static since they left Georgia. "I mean, if hell is even real."

"It's real all right," Dean says. "I don't know if that's where zombies come from, but hell is real."

"Oh. I guess I was kind of hoping my parents were wrong about that one." He looks down at the tapes in the boxes and picks at the masking tape label on one of them. His foot is tapping absently, a steady rhythm against the floor of the car. "This is why you've never heard of us," the kid says. "You never listen to anything recorded after 1985."

"Were you even alive in 1985?"

"No," the kid admits. "Hey, can I drive?"

"No."

"I'm a really good driver."

"On your dirt bike?"

"C'mon, you've been driving for hours."

"Nobody drives this car except me."

"It's a cool car. Very masculine, but I don't think that means you're compensating. Why can't I drive?"

"Because I said so." The words just come out, and somewhere, Dean thinks, somewhere Dad is laughing his dead-in-heaven ass off.

"Please?"

When Dean glances over, the kid is somehow both pouting and rolling his eyes at the same time. That takes fucking talent. "Let me guess," he says, "younger brother?"

"Youngest of five," the kid says proudly. He holds the look for five seconds before his face crumples and he slumps against the seat. "Or, I was. They're probably... I mean, what are the chances?"

The chances are pretty shitty, and they both know it. They're not the only people left alive; there are other cars on the roads, distant figures in the fields, houses with candlelight flickering in the windows. But they don't stop except to siphon gas and break into stores for food, they don't wave or talk or wait to be approached. The air smells like smoke and rotting bodies, even inside the car, strong enough to make Dean's eyes sting. Even the roving packs of zombies are fewer and far between now. Maybe they've migrated to the cities looking for food, maybe they starve easily, maybe they have an expiration date. Dean spends a lot of time thinking about it while the kid talks, but he doesn't come up with any answers. Two thousand miles across the country and the world has shrunk down to pointless conversations with a wannabe rock star and unanswered questions about the ravenous undead, and strips of blacktop silent and scorched and unending outside the windshield.

"Hey," Dean says, gesturing at the box of cassettes. "Put something--"

"Why?" the kid asks sharply. He shoves the box to the floor and crosses his arms over his chest, looking for all the world like a twelve-year-old in the middle of a tantrum. "They're all dead now too."

-

The desert is easier. There aren't supposed to be many people in the desert, and for a few miles at a time Dean lets himself pretend it's just a regular drive on a quiet day, that the wrecked cars by the highway and tendrils of smoke in the distance are the result of a bad holiday weekend and nothing else.

"Look," he begins.

The kids looks up, adjusts his glasses on his nose, peers through the window at the empty landscape. "What?"

"No, I mean, we're about half a day from Vegas," Dean says. "I know where my brother is. He's--he'll be armed, he knows how to stay alive."

The kid nods. He's got his knees pulled up to his chest and his feet on the seat, and he's still staring out the window.

"We'll find him first, then we'll go look for your family. Now, I don't know if they'll--"

"Yeah," the kid says. There's a pack of dogs trotting alongside the road outside, the same dull yellow and brown as the dirt, snapping at each other and snarling, teeth barred in silent threat.

"But we can look."

"Sure." The kid nods again. "Thanks."

One of the dogs watches the car pass with mismatched eyes, and Dean accelerates, taking a narrow curve too fast, cutting across the double yellow line and feeling the car rumble under his hands, through his shoulders.

He just hopes Sam was smart enough to stay put and wait for him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Separation Anxiety (The Zombie Apocalypse Remix)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/61315) by [angelgazing](https://archiveofourown.org/users/angelgazing/pseuds/angelgazing)




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